Dr. Transit is In: More about transit sparked by an article in the Washington Post

As I mentioned in an entry a couple weeks ago, there is a great thread about transit going on on H-URBAN, the email listserv for urban historians. You owe to yourself to check it out.

Closer to home, the Washington Post has published an article about broad transit issues concerning the Metro system in each of the last two Sundays. According to a Washington Post poll quoted in Commuters Like Metro More Than They Use It, "9 percent of Washingtonians said they regularly use the subway to get to and from work. A third of those who don't take Metro said they could but choose not to, while nearly two-thirds said public transportation isn't an option for them. Their reasons varied: Metro is too far from home or from work, or they simply prefer to drive. Long rides and a lack of parking don't help."

While the Post article discusses this but not in any superlative fashion, there are four primary reasons why people don't take Metro:

1. It doesn't go where they need to go from where they are.
2. It's not time-efficient.
3. It's not cost-efficient to take Metro compared to driving.
4. Metro goes where they need to go, and they would ride, if they could get to the station somewhat efficiently. Otherwise, it's easier or faster to drive. (This is related to but subtly different from [2]).

It doesn't go where they need to go from where they are/It's not time-efficient

Searching for someone to blame, the article poses the question "Is it the fault of local governments for allowing development far from Metro stations?" But the questions posed were a little too narrow, because they didn't explore another alternative which is to marry transit planning with land use planning, and most importantly to continue to expand the transit infrastructure.

I am a big proponent of expanding surface rail transit options such as streetcars, because the cost per mile for construction is 1/10 the cost of underground rail. OTOH, it is slower. I like streetcars more than light rail because the systems are more approachable and offer more on/off options generally. (I also think that in Washington, streetcars can be part of various cultural tourism development strategies comparable to San Francisco's Market Street Railway or the ever-popular cable cars. Plus, since 17 million+ people visit Washington each year, seeing streetcars would encourage them to advocate for similar services, where appropriate, back home.)

Both the DC Department of Transportation and Arlington County, along with WMATA, are exploring expanding surface rail transit options, see DC Transit Futures and and Pike Transit. Also see Bring Back The Streetcars from the APTA website, which advocates for streetcars and discusses lower cost options to boot.

It's not cost-efficient to take Metro compared to driving

A lot of times, driving is subsidized at the expense of other transit options. (This is discussed in the blog entry on Amtrak earlier today which mentions the fact that 2/3 of the costs of roads are not paid by gasoline taxes.)

Other subsidies can include free parking. E.g., if people had to pay the roughly $5-$10/day that parking would cost, choices about driving vs. transit would be more clear and the economic calculations might favor transit.

Another subsidy concerns the cost of the military budget because so much of the Federal military budget is spent to ensure continued access to plentiful oil supplies. If the cost of the $300 billion being spent on war in Iraq + the non-Iraq military costs of ensuring relative stability in the Mideast + the cost of the dead and wounded/horribly maimed Americans, Iraqis, and others (such as the Italian agent who successfully obtained the release of a journalist held hostage only to be mistakenly killed at a U.S. military checkpoint) was added to the cost of a gallon of gasoline, sprawl would be a lot more costly, and people couldn't afford to maintain a lifestyle reliant on cheap fuel and cars.

Metro goes where they need to go and they would ride, if they could get to the station somewhat efficiently

I was shocked that the article didn't discuss Ride On, the intra-county bus transportation system in Montgomery County Maryland. My understanding is that this system is a national best practice model. What Ride On does is provide smaller bus transit options. They have a bus stop infrastructure that provides bus access no farther than 1/4 mile from all households in the Red line subway service areas (east and west legs). This makes it relatively easy to get to a subway station efficiently--you walk to a bus stop and take the bus to the station. You don't need to drive. I know that closer in areas such as Bethesda and Silver Spring have high Ride On ridership. I don't know about areas farther out. (Montgomery County still contracts for and funds Metrobus transportation in various parts of the county as well.)

I am not familiar with the supplemental bus system in Fairfax County, the Fairfax Connector, but it sounds like they haven't adopted the Montgomery County model. Certainly their website is about 1/10 as useful as the Ride On website...

This isn't cheap, but it is relatively cheap, compared to building new roads, and it is efficient, and is a way to increase overall ridership of the basic subway system.

And, it eliminates the need for a great deal of parking at Metro stations, because people are taking a bus to the station, instead of demanding that a parking space be provided.

Check out this way that Ride On builds for the future by making it easy for Montgomery College students to ride the bus--because they make it free for them!

A few more words on buses. Bus transportation is a major neglected area in transit, and transit marketing generally is pretty bad. One of these days maybe I'll make some free ads to promote transit use. Or maybe it's something that we can get MoveOn to do. According to Elise Bernard, bus transit is being discussed at DCist. I haven't read it yet. Ride On demonstrates that quality thoughtful service can be provided. Same with BRT as demonstrated in Curitiba Brazil. (For another opinion on BRT that I don't fully agree with, see this. They are concerned that anti-rail advocates seize on BRT. Basically Curitiba has the equivalent of a dedicated rail infrastructure, but they use high-capacity buses.)

Local elected and appointed officials. Chris Zimmerman of the Arlington County Board is a big transit and bus proponent and a long time member of the WMATA board. One of my favorite DC City Councilmembers, Jim Graham, was key in getting Metrobus to add bike racks (plus he was the leader in getting Metro to expand late night hours). And the Post article cited above says that Dan Tangherlini, director of DC's Department of Transportation, is now on the WMATA Board (maybe as an alternate, I haven't checked). We need to engage these people more often. I don't have an email address for Mr. Zimmerman, but Jim and Dan actually answer their own email!